My World
by HecateA
Summary: There's only so much bullying one girl can take. And if she can't show you her side of the story, if she can't prove her point to you, if she can't make you stop... well, she has magic at her disposal doesn't she? A story of cause-and-effect, bullying, thinking of others complexly, and everyone getting what they deserve.
1. Prologue

**I've had this story in my notebooks for a while and I decided that now was time to publishing. Five chapters or so (after this one) are already written out, and the outline is all there just waiting for you to read it. The beginning might be slow, I apologise. I hope you like this story!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters shown in the story below, save one (that you will learn the name of later).**

* * *

**Prologue **

She always smelled like green tea. She always wore her hair up with chopsticks. She talked quietly and rarely. And she was always watching.

Of course, to get a whiff of the relaxing smell you'd need to stop chasing her. To hear her talk you'd need to get in a decent conversation with her. And to realise that all of her hair was tied with an intricate twist of that one chopstick, you'd have to stop teasing her about 'wands'.

But people rarely did that. It was like Lou Ellen wasn't worth those tiny details, those tiny shows of attention. And soon enough, like any other fourteen year old girl, she started feeling that way.

Oh, of course; some people you just had to take crap from, and then you were on your merry way. But Lou Ellen didn't know that; and she'd taken enough crap for a lifetime already.

If anybody would bother asking, she'd get tongue-tied and anxious when you'd talk about her time in Kronos' army, and how her closest relative had been killed by said army. She might even get misty-eyed.

But she would get to the part where she turned, where she brought some of her siblings to fight with Olympus in the final battle. She'd be proud of it if you asked and let her talk to that point.

Do you want to bet that anybody let her? Anybody?

Smart gambler, you are.

Or maybe you just caught on to what Lou Ellen had been going through since Camp started taking in children of the minor gods. The bullies all the newbies faced, times ten because she'd washed up from an army that'd killed said bullies' friends, the fact that everybody knew just how big of an implication Hecate had had in the war, and the general mistrust of everyone.

So really, anybody who'd have been paying any kind of attention should've seen this coming.

Then again

They

Never

Do.


	2. Frogs and Farewells

**1**

**Frogs and Farewells **

Lou Ellen sat by the beach. She blew a piece of hair out of her face, but it fluttered back down. She blew again. It fluttered down again. She could safely add her bangs to the list of things that just wouldn't go away.

"Lou, what's up?" Someone asked. She turned around and saw Percy Jackson. She was glad to see him. She might be quite the introvert, but she appreciated someone coming to say goodbye to her before most demigods drained out of camp and back to their respective homes.

"Not much," she said. Percy sat down in the sand next to her.

"You're not a beach person though," he said. "So I don't get why you're here. Beach is public and everything, but it feels out of character."

"I'm a magic person. And there's something magic about being in this place." She said looking at the waves crashing on the shore. In a way that was true about the world. There was magic to it. Magic to the waves always coming in, magic to the seasons changing at the same time exactly on the dot, magic to animals being born with a mental manual on how to survive... It was why she didn't like myth or science. Couldn't she just appreciate magic? Those two things were usually what Lou Ellen blamed for humans becoming so bland and plain and skeptic.

"Couldn't agree more, as a sea person," Percy said. "But I still think you came here because you're upset."

She looked at the waves again.

"You were on the Princess Andromeda a few seconds before it blew." She said. "You fought for years and years. The fact you're born and broke an oath and all the backlash that came with is because of Kronos. You've watched the people you care most about get hurt, wither, or die. Do you hate me?"

"You?" Percy asked, surprised. And the thing she liked about Perseus Jackson was that he did not lie to her. She knew that the surprise was genuine. "Why would I hate you?"

"Because I was one of the souls that pieced Kronos' back together," Lou said. "That's why."

"I don't hate you for that. Or anything else, don't get me wrong."

"Yes well _that _appears to be a sufficient reason for the rest of this place's population."

"Yeah but Lou, why would you have fought with us? You had nothing to fight for here. Your mom, your siblings and your life was there. Here? Nothing. Kronos had the better offer for you before. If you weren't looking at the bigger picture, he was the best solution."

"It's shocking that out of all people, you're the one who understands that." Lou Ellen said softly. "Curious, even."

"I've had time to think. I knew Luke alright, and I talked to Ethan a couple of times before he… yeah. I… I've actually thought about this and I've seen all the reasons."

"It still feels like nothing," she whispered. It felt like she'd made a mistake. Granted, she had. But was it necessary to rub it in her face to the point where she had bruises on her cheek and a black eye? Some people tripped on their shadows, some people cheated on their significant others while drunk, some people joined Titan armies.

"Look, a lot of people here have had rough patches in the war and they're looking for someone to blame. Or they're just being camp's people." Percy shrugged.

"For heroes, they're acting like villains." The younger girl said coldly, hugging her knees, and tracing runes in the sand.


	3. Fantastic Creatures and Final Straws

**Hi! I'd like to thank everyone for the wonderful input on this story. I also decree Saturday the posting day for this story, and hope that you continue to enjoy it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Lou Ellen, Clarisse, Connor or Alabaster.**

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**2**

**Fantastic Creatures and Final Straws**

Lou Ellen still had her hands busy with six siblings during the year, so she wasn't expecting to be homesick.

There was Twila and Taika- two twin sisters from Chicago, and Matthias from St-John's, Isis from New Orleans, Bran from Kissimmee and Griffin from Pittsburgh. She'd known them all in the Titan Army, except for Bran. All of her siblings were all older than her; the smallest gap being four months between her and Matthias. But she was their counselor, maybe because she had been trained in magic the longest but most likely because she'd been the one to bring them over to the Olympian side of everything after Sunshine had died.

Sunshine… Oh, Lou Ellen remembered her so well. How could you forget Sunshine Torrington?

* * *

_Mint green eyes that sparkled and blonde hair, streaked with chocolate brown, framing a tanned face. She was small and thin and frail looking, like all children of Hecate Lou Ellen had met so far. But she was still taller than Lou Ellen, so she felt a lot like a big sister._

_She remembered Sunshine taking care of her the second she'd appeared at the Titan's Camp, having followed a trail of sparks in the sky. _

_She'd explained everything to Lou Ellen kindly and patiently- the two traits found in every single aspect of Sunshine's life. And she'd done that for every child of Hecate that'd been in the army. She was Alabaster, their nonofficial leader's, sister and had followed him into Kronos' army. He had the leadership to gather children of Hecate and motivate them; Sunshine had the kindness and gentleness to make them stay and smile. They were like two pieces of a broken vase, Sunshine and Alabaster, always completing each other, always being what the other could not be, giving what the other could not give. Lou Ellen actually had a feeling that if you combined the two of them, it would build something great. _

_Lou remembered rushing to Sunshine whenever something scared her, or whenever she had a question about something that had erupted from her fingers. She remembered Alabaster storming into his office pulling his hair out, Sunshine following him in and laughter pouring out thirty seconds later. She recalled sleepless nights during which Sunshine had woken up -just sensing that something was wrong- and taken Lou on a walk under the stars that were labeled and identified by the time they came back. _

_Sunshine and Alabaster had taught most children of Hecate tricks; which was the only way to learn magic. No books or specific teachers or ancient scrolls like in Harry Potter or whatnot. Magic lived on like mythology; from ear to mouth and generation to generation. One person told you about a trick, you tried it. Either it worked, or it made something explode and you tried again. That was how you learned magic. Sunshine had coordinated it all for dozens of kids- most of which were now dead._

_She was the perfect big sister._

_The thought that that perfect big sister was in the Underworld made Lou Ellen feel bitter inside. Maybe if Hecate or Sunshine hadn't been bitter, the latter would still be alive and Lou Ellen wouldn't have a trace of that feeling in her body. But whatever. Things had happened, and there was nothing she could do about it now. The past was the past, and she'd left it behind (contrary to most of Camp Half-Blood)._

_It was the best way to move on, Lou Ellen guessed._

_To add insult to injury, Alabaster was gone now too. Lou Ellen supposed it was her fault. Once Sunshine died after the first round of bullets and spears and swords during the Battle of Manhattan, Alabaster had been devastated. But he'd swallowed tears and pain and screams and everything the rest of them had left out, and kept following orders- determined to kill every last demigod that had sided with the Olympians. Lou Ellen, meanwhile, had distanced herself from the rest of her siblings. She couldn't deal with them at that moment- not after knowing that the next round would probably bring just as much death as the last one._

_She overheard the Titans talking. Actually with the help of one of her best spells, invisibility, Lou Ellen had heard a lot. She'd heard the story of a girl called Silena Beauregard who was being blackmailed into service, she heard the story of how the Princess Andromeda had really exploded and how the two half-blood infiltrators weren't really cowards but that one of them had actually died... And worst, she heard the story of how Kronos was planning on destroying the minor gods once he was done with their help. She heard him explain how the children of Hecate were too powerful, and were going to have to be the first to go. She heard him explain how their scythe charms, the ones that they wore at all times to identify themselves as servants of Kronos, were enchanted to drain them. _

_She heard him say how it would kill most of them in battle, since monsters were more efficient anyways. _

_She heard him admit that he had murdered Sunshine Torrinton for her service._

_She remembered trying not to cry and dashing out of the room when the door opened and someone came to say something about a drakon being released. She remembered her charm slowly fading away like paint dripping as she cried and ran away. She barged into the tent reserved for children of Hecate outside Medusa's Garden Gnome Emporium and said everything right out in one shot._

_Alabaster slapped her. How dare he say those things about Sunshine and Kronos? _

_Lou Ellen had cried harder. _

_Perhaps if she'd been more delicate in explaining to Alabaster what had happened... Perhaps if she'd said it in a nicer, softer way... Maybe then Alabaster would have listened to her and they would have deserted. As she said it, nobody believed her. They attributed it to shock, grief, hysteria, denial... Gave her some nectar and told her to sleep it off. Lou Ellen tried, but it didn't work. The memory was still there. _

* * *

She'd been too distracted for too long, and her hand had caught on fire.

She hissed under her breath and swore in Hindi (which was great fun to do since nobody else was Indian and thus nobody else spoke Hindi and thus nobody called her out for her language).

She hissed out the anti-spell but it didn't work, and so before anybody could realise that she was losing control of it she ran inside the cabin and dunked her hand in the antidote pot- a long jar of sparkling, toxically pink liquid that could reverse virtually any spell.

She lied down on her bed looking up at the ceiling of the Hecate cabin. She did like how it had turned out...

The cabin was bigger inside than out (which Chiron didn't know about), and round like the inside of a tower. The walls were full of cubbyholes. Scrolls tucked into honeycomb-like storage units, jars of this and that, sachets of herbs and plants, cloth bags of rocks or crystals. Magic items from various places in the world decorated shelves or cubbyholes or stood on their own pedestals even some that Chiron didn't know were kept in his camp and that Lou Ellen planned on keeping that way. Cots were lined around the room and there was a big circle of runes on the floor, in the language of magic- the commandments of magic. Before anyone even let you _think _about learning magic, they taught you these rules and tested you and tested you to make sure that they were anchored right into your brain. These were, of course, written in Magic but Sunshine had taught most of them the language. Lou Ellen was as fluent as you could get at this point in time.

_Thou shall not hurt others with magic unless thou are fighting for thou's life._

_Thou shall never perform the same trick twice to keep the wonder in the magic._

_Thou will never explain or attempt to teach magic to one who has no claim to magic blood._

_Thou shall treat magic like the art it is._

_Thou shall always keep in mind that killing with magic is unforgivable and has often led to an individual losing his or her capabilities. _

A flock of miniature planets made out of bronze fluttered down and floated above Lou Ellen. She reached out a hand and tickled a few of them until they trembled as if shaken with chuckles and fluttered off again.

Lou Ellen swung her feet out of bed and headed back outside. She was adding to the conspiracy theories that children of Hecate were the demigod's equivalent to Dracula or Frankenstein by stay indoors all the time.

She came out of the cabin after carefully examining her clothes for traces of ashes.

She was walking back towards the strawberry fields where she and Matthias had been hanging out and trying to figure out how ripe the strawberries were and if they may 'borrow' some. The air was sticky with humidity and it was miserable to be outside, but that didn't stop anyone. You just cut your shorts a bit more, rolled up your t-shirt sleeves and wore flip-flops. That was that.

Everybody was concentrated to various locations in packs and clusters of orange t-shirts, so walking around camp felt pretty lonely.

Then she felt a shove in the back and she tipped forwards, falling to her knees and catching herself on her hands.

"Hey Merlin," someone sneered.

_Oh gods, not now… _Lou Ellen thought. She got back up, turned around and saw exactly who she thought she would.

"How may I help you?" She said. Clarisse was framed by two of her sisters.

"You can stop being sarcastic for one thing," Clarisse said.

"Okay. Have a nice day." Lou Ellen said turning around and walking towards the strawberry fields.

"Heard you were experimenting with fire over by the fields," Clarisse said. "'You trying to send the place up in flames or something?" Lou Ellen stopped dead in her tracks.

"It's called magic Clarisse." She said.

She was shoved again, and her knee fell on a rock. She felt a flash of pain and looked down. It was grazed, like any childhood injury.

"I know what it's called, punk. I'm not stupid. Proof: _I _didn't join the Titans." Clarisse said. "Don't you dare even attempt to do anything that could possibly put this place in danger. Understood?"

"Yes," Lou Ellen said softly. Clarisse left her alone, not used to being more cruel than necessary in her own way.

So _that _was what this was about. Titan Wars and armies, once again. Of course. What else was it ever about? One bad decision she'd turned around from blew up any part of Lou Ellen that was a good person according to some of the people here. Gods, didn't Clarisse know that Lou Ellen had fought in the Titan War _for _Olympus in the end?

* * *

_Lou Ellen had felt jittery and insecure with the idea that she'd have to get out there and fight. Her own scythe charm glittered at her wrist- she wore it like a bracelet. Alabaster had a necklace. Gianna had an anklet. Dimitri had made it into a ring. Combulina wore it like a single earring. _

_The three later siblings were now dead. _

_They were fighting a front protected by the cabin to Demeter, and gaining on them after Alabaster had released a gnawing potion on their main resistance- the plants. Lou Ellen was building up her energy to release a massive spell, thoughts poisoned and haunted by Sunshine, when someone next to her burst into flames. It was one of the eldest sisters at camp, Emmerence. Everything but her hand was on fire. The hand that bore her scythe charm in the form of a hand jewel. _

_Instantly the focus shifted form the cabin to themselves. Lou Ellen's whole arm was uncomfortably warm and then it shot with pain, all starting from the inside of her wrist where her charm rested against her skin. She tore off her bracelet just in time. Beads rolled across the New York road they stood on. A few people caught on and did the same. Just as people caught on, the bracelets started bursting into flame like Emmerence. Most of the children of Hecate were burned- either by their jewels or because they'd helped others who were burning. Some burned to death. About 25% of all deaths in their camp was due to these bracelets. Once they'd done their job, nearly completely crushing the cabin to Demeter Kronos had decided to get rid of them. _

_But they didn't all die. Lou Ellen screamed._

_"This is what happened to Sunshine!" She'd said. "We've been betrayed!" _

_Some believed her._

_"No," Alabaster said. "Lou Ellen, calm yourself. This is a trick of the Olympians."_

_"You're blinded by grief," Lou Ellen said. "And I'd be too Alabaster, but I _heard _them. I heard them and I know that Sunshine would want me to follow my heart and my gut and my sense of right and wrong because that's all that Sunshine ever tried to do._

_For a second she saw tears of rage burn in her brother's eye. "Well then let me follow mine." He said._

_And so a split had occurred just like that, out of nowhere. Some had followed Lou Ellen. Some had stayed with Alabaster. It was a bloody way to say goodbye, as smoke curled into the air. Lou Ellen desperately wanted to convince them all to take the bracelets off- that they should all go. _

_But desertion wasn't for everyone. Some of them were too proud for that. Lou Ellen was not: she was a survivor. And so she ran with a group of her siblings. They destroyed a monster army from its behind, going unnoticed for a very long time. But still, half of her group died. The survivors were the ones she'd came to camp with. The ones who were still in her world. _

_As for Alabaster- he'd survived too. But he hadn't come back to them- he wasn't allowed to, and Lou Ellen didn't think he'd want to either. He'd been scared away from anything good, anything safe and anything vaguely like home by the incredible losses of The Titan War. She stayed awake at night sometimes. Wondering if she could have done anything more to convince him of what was going on before running, if she could have done anything to feel better. She'd known him for nearly as long as anyone in the army. She was the only one who'd had a chance to get to Alabaster's heart and make him see reason._

_It was too late now, though. Now she'd lost him too, and this was the world she had to live with._

* * *

Lou Ellen got up when Clarisse was out of sight. She examined her knee better. Bleeding a bit, but not enough to worry about it, or get nectar or ambrosia for. Not even enough for it to have been intentional on Clarisse's behalf. So she kept walking.

Connor Stoll was whistling and walking down the road, throwing and catching a remote control, absent minded. She didn't even want to know what it was for, or where his brother was.

"Hi Lulu," he said.

"Don't call me that."

"What happened to your knee?" He asked. "Don't you have, like, shaman powers to fix it?"

"Ha ha, very funny." Lou Ellen said, smiling a bit. Sometimes Connor Stoll seemed genuinely funny.

"Do you need a rain dance, or a blood sacrifice or something?" He asked holding out his arm. "I've even got a Swiss army knife, just don't burst a major artery or kill me or anything."

And at other times he was just hurtful.

She smacked the knife out of his hand.

"I'm not a cannibal." Lou Ellen snapped. "And I would _never _draw blood. Go find your brother and dig yourself a hole."

And she stomped off angrily, back towards her own cabin. Screw being outside. Screw fresh air. She couldn't handle it anymore.

She crumpled on the bed and yelled. She didn't even bother with grabbing a pillow to yell into; yelling into the open did the trick just fine.

What was so damn hard to understand? The fact that people made mistakes? The fact that people changed? The fact that Lou Ellen had lost as much in that war as the next- friends, brothers, sisters, _Sunshine… _

She brushed tears from her eyes angrily and stopped crying. She hadn't cried before- not since she'd cried for all of the dead after looking at the inside of this cabin and being shocked by the tiny amount of beds. Nobody had ever made her cry by doing anything other than dying before. It was so weird how that happened- one human who wanted nothing but to be happy hurt another human who wanted nothing but to be happy so badly that the second one broke. Something broke. Yes- broken seemed like the perfect word for this moment.

Didn't they get that she was already mad at herself? That she already felt strange wherever she went without their helpful pointers That she didn't need their help to feel bad about herself and where she'd been and anything else? Because she didn't. Gods, her world was in such a crippled and painful state of existence.

_If they only had a clue…_ She thought.

She looked up suddenly, at the commandments of magic.

If got a clue…

* * *

_To this day on the inside of her wrist there was a burn mark, one shaped like a scythe._


	4. Crystal Balls and Colourless Skies

**Very sorry for the lateness of the chapter, I had a busy weekend. Thank you all for the continued support.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own most of the characters shown below.**

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**3**

**Crystal Balls and Colorless Skies **

Connor's head felt like he was hung over, except about a gazillion times worst. Like he had a brain freeze at the same time, and maybe some of Chiron's old CD's blaring out bad music.

He shivered at the thought, but still looked around.

He was _not _in Kansas anymore. Or at Camp. Or any place he'd seen on Google Images or photographed or in travel magazines. Part of him suspected he ever would have if he'd looked in all the pictures in existence.

He looked around and saw five other half-bloods, crumpled around like him.

"Yo!" He said. "Travis, bro, wake up!" He said shaking the closest one. "Wake up! Pancakes! With lots of syrup and blueberries in them and homemade…"

Travis shot up going "What about chocolate chips and- oh…"

Then he looked around in total awe. His eyes marvelled over the same things Connor had; the tall mountains surrounding them and plunging them in a valley, the fountains with lion heads pouring out the cleanest water ever seen, the beige wild mushrooms growing along trees and up their trunks, the patches of grass cut deliberately at different heights. The white sky whose colour made it painful to look at and the clouds, which didn't look like clouds but like spots of spilled black ink that curled onto themselves… Flocks of tiny distant birds crossed the sky. Other than that, it seemed to be only them.

"Where are we..?"

"I don't know," Connor said. "But we should wake up the others."

And so they shook Clarisse La Rue, Will Solace, Laurel Sharbino, Clovis Hoflin, and Pollux McMann until they woke up with a series of 'where are we', 'Connor get the Hades out of my cabin' and 'What's happened?'

It took a while to get Clovis up, and Clarisse threw a mean punch and nearly hit Travis when he touched her.

"What is it punk? Where are we?"

"This doesn't feel safe," Will said.

"As it should." Someone new said.

They spun around to see Lou Ellen Parmar. She was a short girl, who wore her black hair up with chopsticks. She wore a faded camp shirt she seemed to float in, jean shorts that looked home-cut and flip flops. Rope bracelets cluttered at her right wrist and her left ankles- some of them had beads on them; beads with symbols or Greek letters or eyes on them. He wasn't sure what they were, but usually he could make a good joke about it, and half of that time she'd smile. But other than those splashes of colour, Lou Ellen was pale and bland and she looked sickly. Even her eyes were unusually and somewhat disturbingly pale.

"Where the Hades are we?" Pollux asked.

"Yeah, you better explain punk_." _ Clarisse said.

"You're in my world." Lou Ellen said. Lou Ellen barely ever got mad at taunting and stuff- but this seemed inhumanely… calm? It was weird, but it was like Lou Ellen didn't care what they said, like she had her own idea to follow and the path was set in stone no matter what anybody did. Her attitude felt terminal.

"Wait, _your _world?" Connor asked.

"Mmm-hmm," Lou Ellen nodded. "See, I could talk for hours about how I _am _a part of camp and how I _did _help bring Kronos down and how I'm _not _a freak. But you and I both know that you would go out of your way not to listen. All of you. Whether I am to blame ADHD or your lack of interest and consideration of me as a person, I'm not even sure. But having failed the most basic way of human communication, I have had to resort to other methods to get my point across to you. So I'm just going to show you my world and watch you figure out its perils."

"_Your _world?" Clarisse snarled.

"Yes. Along the way I'll hurl challenges at you and see how fast you think." Lou Ellen said. Connor felt like he was looking at a volcano that was rumbling and on its way to eruption, but he didn't let that scare him. This was Lou, right? She wouldn't hurt a fly.

"I don't understand," Will said.

Lou's eyes flashed. "Well neither do I, so maybe we can figure out why people are jerks and why that hurts together, shall we Will? You're at the top of my list, as a matter of fact. That's right: I have a list for all the people who have hurt me, and I just drew seven names from a hat and got you lot here."

Connor's heart twinged. He was on that list? But... but he hadn't done anything he... had he?

"You mean… You made a world… A whole _freaking _world… Out of your magic?" Connor asked. "Just to show us something?"

Lou Ellen just nodded solemnly even if that seemed _so beyond cool. _

"But it's not made from magic; it's made out of truth and hurt and demons and shadows. It's my own personal hell, and now it's yours."


	5. Black Cats and Belonging

**My World**

* * *

**4**

**Black cats and Belonging**

"Lou!" Connor yelled in thin air. She'd disappeared as soon as she'd finished talking, materialising into thin air like gods sometimes did. That was ironic. Lou Ellen _was _like the god of this world. "Lou, you don't have to do this!"

"Quit yelling Stoll or I'm going to remove your throat." Clarisse said.

"Okay, she's half-right." Pollux admitted.

"What, she'll cause permanent damage to Connor?"

"Okay- two thirds right. We've got to stop panicking and get with the program. Well, Lou Ellen's program." Pollux said.

"Why would she do this?" Laurel whispered. The daughter of Aphrodite looked really pale. She was clad in tall leather boots and jeans. She wore an orange camp shirt and her brown leather jacket, near-white hair making a loose Grecian braid.

"I don't know. What did _you _do?" Pollux said.

"Me?" Laurel asked. "Excuse me, Mr Know-it-all; I didn't do anything to that girl!"

"Don't say that," Connor said. "Pollux is right. Lou Ellen's got a program, she's doing this specifically for a reason."

Laurel opened her mouth.

"And she isn't insane and she's not going nuts," Connor cut before she could say it.

"Well let's start with the simplest explanation," Travis said. "She's nuts."

"I've told you, she isn't nuts!" Connor said.

"Well second easiest then," Travis said. "She's pissed off at Clarisse because everyone is pissed off at Clarisse at some point or another, and sometimes that becomes a permanent condition."

"If she had a problem with me, she should have fought back." Clarisse said, her fists in her pockets.

"This _is _her fighting back," Connor said.

"I think he's right. And she picked us out of the whole of camp to fight back against." Will said nervously.

"Why, nobody at camp likes her, it's not just us." Laurel shrugged. There was thunder and everyone curled up towards each other.

"Dude… She can hear us…" Connor said.

"I think she takes 'her world' pretty seriously. She made it fail-proof."

"Well congratulations to her, maybe she's got some Athena blood, I don't care!" Laurel said. "What I do care about, is how I get out of here."

Pollux sat down on a rock.

"Yeah. Definitely." The younger Stoll nodded.

Connor sat down next to him.

"What the flip are you guys doing?" Travis asked.

"Great, her insanity is spreading." Laurel rolled her eyes.

"Lou isn't letting us out of here when we ask. She'll do it when she's good and ready. I'm going to sit down. Maybe we should play charades." Connor said.

"I 'aint playing stinking charades with you," Clarisse growled.

"Well then enjoy working your legs out." Pollux said.

They waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Clovis sat down first, his legs probably exhausted from the surprise dose of exercise, but he didn't fall asleep. Maybe Lou Ellen had made sure of that. Travis sat down second. Then Laurel sighed dramatically, stopped tapping her foot to the ground. Will stopped trying to be macho and strong. Clarisse was last and she wasn't happy about it.

"Now should we play a game? I Spy?" Travis asked. Clarisse smacked him and that was that for charades. Connor didn't even bring up Monopoly or Spoons.

After a while, Travis broke the silence.

"What did you all do to her? Why do we belong?"

Nobody answered.


	6. Symbols and Snakes

**Hey it's the jerk writer who had some trouble remembering to update this story but who will suffer from such afflictions no longer and will not give excuses but instead jump right to the story!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**My World**

* * *

**5**

**Symbols and Snakes**

Will was the first one to tense.

"What's wrong, Solace? Haven't seen a pretty girl in more than two hours?" Travis asked. Laurel made an insulted sound that nobody cared about.

"No… I don't know, just a feeling. I don't like it here." Will shrugged.

It was a while later when Clarisse tensed too.

"Who's got weapons?" She asked.

Everyone checked, but even those weapons that disguised and were carried around casually in the forms of jewelery or pocket knick-knacks were gone.

"Why?" Connor asked.

Laurel gagged. "That smell!"

And then the others smelled it. Reptile. Snakes. Like DNA from a dracaena and Kampê that had been fused together by some wacko in a lab who'd found that necessary.

Will swore.

"Guys… I know this… My old man…"

And then the snake burst out from the forest area. It was indefinitely long, with green and brown and gold scales that fused together to create a new colour. Its eyes were mean and its fangs were bloody, even if it hadn't killed any of them yet.

"Scatter!" Clarisse ordered. Everyone rushed inside the trees, hoping the giant would get stuck between two of them. It turned out not to have that problem since it could plough through everything in its path. Connor sucked in his breath, but didn't stop running.

Will Solace had grabbed onto a branch and climbed a tree. He looked out for the beast throughout the branches and jumped from branch to branch whenever he had to, calling out positions to those running ahead. Clarisse was running around the beast tauntingly, yelling at it. It snapped its jaws at her, but Clarisse wasn't scared at all by the snake. She picked up a branch from the ground and started poking at it. When it got mad enough it lunged at her, craving blood. She jumped out of the way and it crashed into a tree.

"Clarisse is close!" Will yelled over his shoulder to the others. Clovis was out of breath, clinging onto Connor as they ran.

"Should've had a V8 bro," Connor told him.

There was a loud hissing sound.

"And so is the snake!" Will cried out to them.

Clarisse burst through trees and Will jumped to the nearest one.

"I used to get snakes at my house all the time," Pollux said. "You just bash their heads with a shovel."

"Gross," Laurel said.

"That's inhumane!" Travis said. "That's my dad's sacred animal right there!"

"Yeah well your dad's sacred animal tried to kill my dad as a child Travis, so I hope you've got a big shovel Pollux!" Will yelled down. "That thing's not a snake, it's the Python. _The _Python, as in, the only person ever to defeat it was a god! And it's recovering from that tree collision!"

"Well I'm sure that seven highly trained demigods have the same power as a baby god," Travis said.

"We can't squish it with a shovel…" Connor said. "But we can squish it with something bigger…"

He looked up at Will in the trees.

"Guys, I've got it! Laurel, you're the smallest, stay here!" Connor said, taking her hand and dragging her to a spot. "People, climb the trees around the spot, get on a branch above Laurel, or a place from which you can jump her! Will, get over here!" He ordered around.

"Connor Stoll I forbid you from killing me and sacrificing me to that thing!" Laurel said sharply.

"Take one for the team, will you?" Clarisse grunted.

"No- don't worry Laurel! Run when I say… Rapa Nui!"

"What?"

"It's the tribe name of the people who created the Easter Island heads, that's all I've got to think about right now," Connor explained, grabbing onto a branch. "Move people, we don't have much time!"

Everybody climbed, not quite sure where this was going. Clovis was the last up and he was leaning on a branch over where Laurel stood.

The snake burst in. Laurel screamed, terrified of snakes and monsters. Connor waited and waited… He signaled to his brother to jump on three.

"RAPA NUI!" Connor yelled.

Laurel dove out of the way and disappeared into the bush, everyone jumped, and the timing was perfect- they all landed feet first on the snake's head, crushing its thin skull.

"Alright Stoll!" Pollux cheered.

"I knew one day I'd be glad you were my brother." Travis said. Connor smiled, pleased with himself, but wondering why Lou Ellen hadn't given them weapons when she'd decided to send the giant snake after them.

They waited to watch the Python's body turn to dust and then disappear, but not everything left. Some of the golden monster dust stayed on the ground, writing out:

_ONE _

_OF YOU _

_IS ALSO _

_A_

_ SNAKE_


	7. Demons and Dancing

**Hey it's the jerk writer who had some trouble remembering to update this story but who will suffer from such afflictions no longer and will not give excuses but instead jump right to the story!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**My World**

* * *

**6**

**Demons and Dancing**

"Alright, who the hell got bit by a radioactive gardener snake in the strawberry fields?" Connor said.

"Don't be stupid. If camp had radioactive gardener snakes, they'd be in the forest." Travis said.

"Shut up both of you," Pollux said, panting and pale and scared out of his mind. "This is serious."

"She's giving us hints like this is charades," Laurel said distastefully. "Who the hell is 'the snake'?"

"None of us are freaking snakes." Will said. "This is stupid."

He walked up to the message and started kicking at the dust, making the letters disappear.

"Hey!" Connor said. He grabbed his arm and pulled Will back. "Stop it! That's from Lou!"

"We don't need anything from that little witch," he said.

"If you hadn't noticed, we're in Lou Ellen Land! She's, like, Lord of it, and we're not getting out of here unless you shut up and we listen to what she has to say!" Connor yelled back.

"It's you, isn't it?" Pollux said. "You're the snake."

They all starred down Will.

"I swear I didn't think this would happen." He choked out, looking paler than any sun-kissed and tan child of Apollo ever usually look.

_Didn't think what? That you'd get what you gave? _

Will gulped.

"What did you do?" Travis said. "Why is she pissed with you?"

"She's not exactly pissed," Will said scratching the back of his neck. "She's kind of just… I guess she's hurt. I hadn't really thought of it."

"What did you do?" Clarisse repeated. "The sooner you talk, the sooner we wrap this up. Don't you dare think that I won't make you sing if I have to."

"The trees are changing," Clovis noticed. They looked behind them and saw that the healthy green trees were shaking like they'd been grabbed by the roots and used as rattles.

"Talk," Travis said shaking Will, "before the ground under her feet starts to do that."

"Way to give her the idea, Stoll." Laurel whispered hurriedly, looking around at everything in a state of panic.

"It's stupid, really." Will said. "It was just…"

The sky thundered.

"Not to Lou Ellen it wasn't. To Lou Ellen it meant something." Pollux said.

"Well it wasn't supposed to! It wasn't serious, I thought it was a joke. It started with a dare and…"

"Oh boy." Travis said. "This is gonna be good."

Will looked away and suddenly the trees stopped moving. Dark shapes started flying across the forest ground, just like in Peter Pan. Shadows that didn't belong to anyone- Like a shadow puppet play on the ground.

Clearly Lou Ellen didn't trust Will to tell this story himself.

At the bottom of Will's feet, there were a few humanoid shapes smashed together, messing around with each other like a group of friends trash-talking or messing with other at the arena around. Or at the archery range.

Another shape lingered on the other side of their little huddle.

The friends nudged towards her and pointed and shoved each other. One shape detached itself from the group and moved forwards to the other one. They talked for a while, exaggeration clear in their gesturing. Suddenly Connor recognised a bump on the back of the lone shape's head: it was a bun. The messy kind that happened when you packed your hair up behind your head with a single chopstick...

The second shape pointed somewhere and raised his hands, like an invitation. The lone shape –_Lou Ellen's shape_- nodded.

The figures whirled around them and for a second, when they were at optimal speed, everything was black.

The lone shape was sitting down, alone, right at Will's feet as if it was meant for him to see. There was a flock of shapes, dancing and mingling and having a good time further off, near Clarisse. The scene felt familiar to Connor but he couldn't place it.

Then the same ship as before, Connor was sure of it, came back in the picture with another definitely feminine shape. He waved to Lou Ellen and got lost in the mob of… dancers.

Dancers.

They were the dancers from one of camp's celebration dances after the Titan War- something that Chiron finally had broken down and allowed.

Everything disappeared.

Show was over, and they turned to Will.

"Not only did you stand her up," Pollux said carefully, "But you also seemed to have brought another girl to the dance after asking her out."

Connor couldn't help himself. He punched Will right in the mouth. Will backed off, folded in two, hand over his mouth.

"You-"

"Connor, Con-Man," Travis said, hands on his shoulders, pulling him away. Will bounced back, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. He prepared to throw a punch, but Clarisse grabbed his fist and twisted it so that his wrist popped. She shoved her fingers on a pressure spot on his throat, and Will relaxed.

"I don't think so," she said.

"You _idiot!" _Connor yelled. "That wasn't even an accident! That wasn't even a misunderstanding or anything like that! That was deliberate! You _tried _to hurt her while some of us are still trying to figure out why the hell we're here!"

Thunder rumbled in Lou Ellen's sky. Lou Ellen's sky, Lou Ellen's ground, Lou Ellen's vegetation, Lou Ellen's heartbreak. It was everything Lou Ellen here. Connor felt it. He felt _her. _

"It was a dare to go talk to her and I casually mentioned that she must be a great dancer during the ensuing conversation! I didn't think she'd taken me seriously." Will said. "I mean… I thought it was obvious that there was no way I'd ask a girl like her to… It doesn't matter. I'm here now. I'm getting my punishment."

"Plus your mouth's bleeding," Pollux said.

Will glared at Connor.

"Yeah. Thanks."

They starred Will down. He talked more.

"I didn't even think she was hurt."

"Because girls hang out sitting on rocks and looking at you all the time," Clarisse nodded. "Of course. Godsdamn, you're lucky that no children of Athena are here they would die just looking at you_."_

"Stop looking at me like I should be stoned! It isn't like you're all innocent either. She didn't look hurt or anything," Will said defensively.

"Why would she have given you something to work with?" Connor whispered.

"Come again, Stoll?" Clovis asked.

"Why Lou Ellen didn't look hurt," Connor said a little more loudly. "Because why should she give anyone something to work with and use against her?"

The sky rumbled, as if to say 'bingo'.


	8. Voodoo and Voices

**Hi! So here's why your chapter is late: I want to try a new format (because now is ****_so _****the time, eh?) I want to try giving each character two chapters- one in which they're introduced, and the next one during which a character gets called out. The first will be randomly during the week, and the next will be on Saturday as per usual. Yay or nay, let me know.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**7**

**Voices and Voodoo **

They'd set off again, walking in the opposite direction as the sun for lack of a better idea. Also to piss off Will who liked light and sun and heat like most of his siblings.

"What do I do?" Will asked. "I mean, apologise yeah right, but what? How do I get out of here?"

"I think you're in this until the rest of us are free," Clovis said.

"How the hell do you know that?" Clarisse asked.

"It feels right," Clovis said.

"Yeah well if I always did what felt right I'd be in prison right now." She said.

"Some may say that you should be in prison right now anyways," Travis said.

Pollux and Connor's eyes met. It made Connor relax a bit to know that someone else around these parts was taking this seriously. Someone else realised that this world was basically a loud shout-out telling them that Lou Ellen had cracked. That this world was the last straw and that if they didn't satisfy her, give her the reaction or penitence that she wanted (and most likely deserved)… Who knew what she'd do to them -which was worrying- or to herself, which was more worrying.

That's when Connor heard the voice.

_There's one of you whose life is the key to getting out of here. Kill one, get everyone else out of here free. Go back to camp. Wouldn't that be nice? To be able to handle things from nice, safe camp instead of this place? Who knows what's going on here._

Connor shook his head and ignored it. He was dehydrated or something.

_Clarisse is the real reason you're here. Duh; she's Clarisse. Abandon her and the rest of you can get off easy._

Connor brushed it out of his mind. No way was that going to happen, stupid hallucination.

_Will's an ass. Do you need to drag him around anymore? _

_A bigger group has more chances at getting attacked by monsters._

_Clovis_

_Laurel knows how to get out of here, she just won't say anything._

_Clovis_

_Travis_

When his brother got mentioned Connor lost it.

"What's going on?" He asked.

Everyone looked around.

"It feels like an echo…" Laurel said looking around. "No, not an echo. Like a... a live broadcast." 

Clovis screamed and covered his ears. He fell to his knees. His forehead was nearly touching the ground but Connor still heard him shouting loud and clear.

"I did not!" Clovis said. "_I did not! I don't want this! I don't I…"_

Connor scrambled to meet Pollux' eyes.

It was Clovis' turn now.


	9. Potions and Pasts

**Hi! Thanks for not giving up on the long wait, I've had a crazy everything lately. But the chapter's here now and enjoy _porte favore._**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**8**

**Potions and Pasts**

The grass under their feet changed into pictures. Some were black-and-white, others were in full colour. Laurel was the first to pick one up in curiosity.

"Clovis… this looks like you," she said turning the picture around to see a rosy looking baby playing with a big, colourful, plastic key ring. "You were such an adorable baby."

Clovis nodded, puzzled. Yes, that was him.

They picked up more pictures. They were all baby pictures until Pollux made a choking sound.

"Clovis, is this you too?" He asked showing a picture of a seven year old boy backed up against a playground structure, face to face with a fifth grader's fist.

Clovis didn't say anything after emitting a small whimper, but clearly it was. Connor hesitated before sitting down and looking over at the pictures.

He flipped through them. A paper mache volcano split at the ground, at Clovis' feet. There was a footprint on it.

A team picture of a group of softball players. Clovis was standing off to the side. Some kid had put his helmet on the ground to keep him from getting any closer.

A picture of Clovis and a woman with a shawl wrapped around her head, her eyes hollow. She was smiling and had her arms wrapped around Clovis. An IV unit was plugged into his hand.

A picture of Clovis in a suit standing next to a man dressed formally, a hand clamped extremely tightly over his shoulder. More people in black were milling behind them.

They were standing on _piles _of these pictures.

"Clovis, baby," Laurel said softly handing him a picture. Connor got a look at it as it switched hands.

A picture of Clovis in a bathing suit, with a bruise on his side.

"That was never taken in picture," Clovis said shaking his head. "Nobody… knew… I…"

"What about this?" Travis asked handing him one.

This one was of Clovis onboard the Princess Andromeda, probably in its earlier, cleaner days. He was still standing away from the crowd, except this time there wasn't even a batting helmet there. They must have downright told him to move.

Clovis made a tiny choking sound and Laurel moved to wrap him in her arm, running her hand through his hair.

"How do you feel Clovis?"

Everyone spun around to spot the speaker. A small stick-thin girl with bronzed skin and black hair put up was staring at them. Her sundress hung off of her, she must've been about six. Except for her eyes- no six year old had such bitter, clever eyes… or at least Connor dared to hope.

"How do you feel, having your entire being exposed and vulnerable?"

Chopsticks held her hair up.

"Lou Ellen?" Pollux asked.

"I'm talking to Clovis," a ten year old girl standing behind Travis said. She wore roughened up jeans and a tank top with a busted strap. The other girl was gone, and Pollux' lips were too. "How does it feel Clovis? Let me tell you how it feels like: _horrible. _But at least _I _had the decency not to twist your past. At least I showed them what was real about you, and now I can show them what's real about _me."_

The pictures in Connor's hands grew warm and when he looked back down, he saw completely different people and scenarios. A little girl like the one he'd just seen, sometimes with women close enough in appearance to be her aunts, and sometimes with a man who wore glasses and had a cheerful face and a twinkling brown eye.

A fourteen year old girl stood behind Clarisse and pointed to a picture.

"That was a dance recital, when I was five."

A four year old walked up to Connor and pointed the picture in his hand. "That's my dad teaching me how to walk."

The same seven year old as before, the seven year old version of Lou Ellen, stood next to Clovis.

"My reality may not be sugar coated, but I was happy and loved, and I spread happiness and love in my family in my own way. True or false, Clovis?"

"I don't…"

"Yes you know, you tune your dreams like a radio and find people's lives to watch, as if they're shows for your enjoyment. Is it true or false?" An eleven year old sitting in the middle of the group announced.

"Lou Ellen, I…"

The ground shook and Clovis actually fell to his knees.

"True or false, Clovis?" She asked again.

"True," Clovis spat out at lightning speed.

"Right. And I had a gorgeous family, and a handful of classmates who didn't mind me, true or false?"

"True," he said immediately this time. It looked like the rest of them had finally learned not to push her. Nothing like a natural disaster warning to establish limits and common sense, that's what his mamma had always said.

"I did my best at school, and that wasn't very good but I didn't fail and always made my family proud- true or false?"

"True."

"Fantastic. We're all on the same page." A seven year old next to Laurel announced gleefully.

An angry twelve year old stomped towards Clovis from between Clarisse and Will.

"So why in the world would you have spread a rumour around that I'd killed my father in a magic accident?"

The ground shook ahead and this time they all wavered.

* * *

Connor looked at Clovis, still on all four with his head bowed down pathetically. Connor felt bad for him, he honestly did. Having his entire past just blurted out? It couldn't feel good. Connor knew that there were some things that he wouldn't want people to see -especially not Lou Ellen, out of all people, no matter how much she was his friend. But he was still surprised. _Clovis _had started that rumour? He'd assumed that someone from Ares or Hermes had come up with that.

"Let me tell you why this is worse than you think it is," Lou Ellen's younger self said. "For starters, as if everyone at camp wasn't mistrustful enough about the children of Hecate, now they are all under the impression that we have enormously disastrous accidents with our magic on a regular basis, and that we cause casualties and don't know how to handle ourselves. Now we have people like her," she waved her hand towards Clarisse, "who get pissed when we use magic because they're scared of what damage we may cause. _You_ retreat into dreams and dance the day away. So you may not know this, but it _stinks _to be the child of a minor god right now- and it will for just a bit longer, if we're lucky. Ergo usually we stick with each other, and if we decide not to than at least we stay civil."

A three year old girl appeared behind Clovis and he jumped and spun around as soon as the little girl in pyjamas spoke up. "Do you want to know what the worst part is?"

She starred Clovis down until he answered.

"Yes," he said.

"Sorry?" She asked.

He met her eyes. "Yes."

The little girl pinched her lips and blinked a lot before doing anything. The pictures slipped out of Connor's hand and fluttered away. All of the images did, like a flock of butterflies. Their backs were different shades of grey, and when all of the nuances were put together and specially arranged, they created a new black and white, crisp-clear picture.

Lou Ellen, eight years old, had her arms looped around the neck of an incredibly frail and definitely incredibly sick man. He was bald, pale, and his smile looked completely fuelled by some outside force. _Lou Ellen, _Connor dared to think. The man's shirt hung on him loosely, and an IV pole wasn't far behind.

Connor's heart sank through his chest and into his stomach where it shriveled up and dissolved a bit. No, _a lot_ once he put A and B together.

"My dad was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer when I was six, when it'd spread to his lymph nodes and made these lumps. When I was seven it spread to all these different parts of his throat- larynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, you name it. When I was eight it spread to his lungs and I lost him."

Her eyes were haunted. Clovis fell back on his butt and put his head between his knees, as if all of his mistakes were suddenly crystal clear and he felt the weight of Lou Ellen's world fully, plus the weight of his own.

"Funny thing that is," a six year old manifestation said. "I watched my father die, was orphaned and pitched into the foster system, only to be accused of slaughtering him seven years later. I'm not going to deny it. I caused some minor burns before I realised that I could control my magic. But I didn't kill my dad, something much less pleasant and quick did."

Connor couldn't take his eyes off the bitter little girl, the one who had been told that her father was critically ill; Clovis, who had just been told how badly he'd screwed up in the world and was crying for probably a thousand other reasons; and the hovering photo of Lou Ellen and Mr Parmar. Happy, little Lou with happy eyes; and her father. That twinkle in his eye was familiar to Connor. It was his favourite part of Lou. It only popped up when she told a story and loved every second of it, or when he awed at some charm she cast, or when she was with one of her brothers and sisters. It was a happy twinkle, a hopeful twinkle, a very beautiful twinkle in a million ways.

"It's ridiculous that you're the one twisting the story around when, from what I understand, you lost your mother the exact same way."

Clovis shook his head, face still hidden.

"Don't shake your head just because reality's ugly. You and I went through the same thing. The _exact same thing. In the same state. _I cannot press the matter enough. Only three things were different: the type of cancer, how long treatment lasted, and I was three years younger or so," Lou Ellen said. "You and I are so alike, you and I have cried for so many of the same reasons, you and I both spent so much time in a hospital and on our knees trying to pray the good back into our lives and the bad out of our parents… It's ridiculous that _you _get to throw my past out in the open and twist everything that it is. It's ridiculous that you get to make me look like a villain when really, all I did was lose a hero."

Clovis was crying. Connor heard it clearly now.

"I didn't know," he said.

"Which is why you should've kept your mouth shut," an eight year old Lou Ellen nearly screamed at him. Clovis cried harder. "When you don't know something you keep your mouth shut- that is common sense."

Lou Ellen didn't care that Clovis was crying and that was scary to him. Then again, when you exposed someone's past and made parts of it look worst... did you really care about how _they _had cried?

"But since you can't manage to do it yourself, let me be the first to have the honour of making sure that you will never make someone feel like they come from _nowhere,_ that their past was _nothing _and that what they'd done and been through carried _no weight_!"

Pollux' lips reappeared, Clovis' lips disappeared and Lou Ellen vanished.

When Connor obeyed to Travis' gesturing and pressed his ear to the ground, he heard crying.

Was it really that bad that he cared about both Lou Ellen and Clovis crying? After all, he hadn't been a saint to land here either.

He didn't care. Lou Ellen was crying alone, and maybe that made the difference.


	10. Warlocks and Weapons

**My school year's just about over and I think that you all know at least a bit what that means. Work. Work. Work. Never ending work. Extra projects. Monologues. Oral presentation. Science labs. Work. Work... I'm sorry, but fanfiction had to take the passenger seat. I'm sorry, but my last exam is tomorrow and so things should run a bit more smoothly. The story will definitely be finished before the end of summer.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**9**

**Warlocks and Weapons **

They burst from the forest and scrambled away from its edge.

Clarisse was last- not because she was slow, but because she was defending all of them with a huge stick that was pretty sucky as far as weapons went. But it was the best even a daughter of Ares could do. Connor shouldn't talk- he and Travis had been throwing rocks at...

The monster burst from the forest after them. Well, monster_s. _It was a pack of lynxes with foaming mouths and wild eyes. Connor kind of remembered sort of what the myth about lynxes was like. Some dude, King Lyncus, had tried to kill an envoy of Demeter when he'd come to teach about agriculture. Demeter got pissed and turned him into a lynx. Connor assumed that these were his minions.

If not a Minotaur with a dragon's tail was about to come out of the forest and suck their blood like an _Empoussa_. That was theory number two.

Laurel was using her belt as a whip to make one of the lynxes back off. Pollux was imitating their growl to sound dominant- that was dangerous. Will was up in a tree and throwing down sticks and schist. Clarisse was using some serious kung fu or something to wack the lynxes away. She knocked down a few of them, but they kept coming. Directly at her.

"Why don't we get any weapons?" Clarisse growled, frustrated.

It was as if she'd said a trigger word of some sort. The lynxes froze just as Connor smacked one on the head, and turned into adorable tabby kittens, playful and harmless. They chased each other away.

The wind blew again, a gentle, harmless breeze this time, and a new message wrote itself down in the sand.

_Exactly what I was thinking yesterday._

_And the day before._

_And _

_The _

_Day_

_Before_

_That._


	11. Rituals and Replicas

**To try and get forgiven for the long wait, here is another chapter. I hope you enjoy it. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**11**

**Rituals and Replicas**

Clarisse blinked. It was her turn.

An identical model of Clarisse materialised itself right in front of her.

"Tell me why you're a good person," the model said. "Tell me every single thing you've done that the judges of the dead will let you in Elysium for. Tell me every single thing you are proud of. Tell me your accomplishments. As if you're passing a job interview. Come on La Rue, look alive."

Clarisse swallowed.

"I raised that kid in my cabin," she said. "He was eight when he got here. Toby McCoy. He's gone now- stays home."

"I raised my little sister Abigail. She's gone now too, but gone for good." The doppelganger replied, as if to match it.

"I was the first camper to enter the labyrinth this century," Clarisse said.

"I was the first soldier to doubt the system."

"I was the first child of Ares to lead a successful Capture-the-Flag game in fifty years," Clarisse said.

"I was the first child of Hecate to be a camp counsellor. Ever."

Definitely Lou Ellen.

"I led the quest to find the Golden Fleece," Clarisse said. "I fought off three basilisks and an Empoussa on an airplane to get the damn thing back to New York."

"I translated over 50 texts from Runes into English or Greek to make sure that they weren't lost for future generations of magic-makers, often dealing with attracting monsters in the process." The doppelganger said.

"I led my cabin and made sure over three quarters of them survived through the Battle of Manhattan," Clarisse said.

"I convinced my siblings to rebel against Kronos to fight for the Olympians," the doppelganger said. Had she really done those things?

"I killed a drakon."

"That I did not."

"I held the best friend I ever had as she died," Clarisse said. Her heart was on her sleeve when she said that, and images of Silena and Silena's smile and Silena's hair and Silena's eyes danced around Connor's mind. He could nearly hear her laughter in the wind.

"Bless you for that." The Carbon Copy said, looking as haunted as Connor felt.

"I survived a Hyperborean's frost."

"I survived every single day getting told to kill myself or getting pound on." Lou Ellen said.

Clarisse blinked. Her carbon copy blinked back.

"The thing is," she said. "We're not that different. We're both leaders. We both care about our people. We've both lost some of those people. We've both been told to back out of what we love for various reasons- religion, ignorance, gender, race… We've both broken rules and enjoyed doing it. Yeah?" The carbon copy smiled and Clarisse had to smile back. "But the thing is; I haven't lost the very human ability of _empathy. _Because _that _is your problem."

"My problem right now is you," Real Clarisse growled.

"No," Carbon Copy said. "Because I've been yelled at that I'm worthless too. Not by my father, of course…"

"You are crossing the lines." Real Clarisse growled.

Carbon Copy ignored her. "I've been told worst too. I've been called a waste of space. I've been told to kill myself and try to be reborn into something better. I've been yelled at just for the fun of it, let's be real. And never. Ever. Have I repeated those words to anybody else. And never. Ever. Will I."

Carbon Copy sized up Clarisse from head to toe. "You? You're disconnected. Somehow, you forget how small you are when someone yells at you."

Clarisse shrunk in size. She was Connor's height now.

"Somehow, you forget how _tiny _you are when someone tells you these things."

She was now four feet tall.

"Teeny. _Tiny." _

She might reach Connor's knees.

"Molecular_." _

She was about half-way to his ankles; Connor was many things –charming for one- but tall was not one of them.

"How _weak _you feel."

Clarisse dropped the stick she was still holding. Her arms were shaking.

"How _cold _everything inside you gets."

The daughter of Ares was trembling like a leaf. She was George Shrinks faced with the neighbour's cat.

"How _horrible _you feel."

Clarisse was shaking her head. Her skin was tinged green.

"You can somehow be dashing on the battlefield, strong as a leader, wonderful as a trooper… you can keep a strong face when you're told that you are a disappointment to your blood, to your kin, when you get pushed around. But you fail miserably at remembering those feelings. You fail at placing your emotions in the real world. And so you make others feel that way _constantly. _You are exactly the person that you hate so much. You are what you hate, and you don't even realise it because you are so busy taking out how horrible the world is and how hot your blood boils on everyone."

Clarisse didn't deny it.

"So maybe I had it coming, you know. Getting my ass handed to me every day. I was the worst of the world for you. I was a servant of Kronos. I hadn't even been blackmailed into it. Not like Silena."

"Don't you say her name," Clarisse growled.

Lou Ellen didn't mind. "Getting my ass handed to me every day and never being able to do anything because what _is _there to be done? When someone's so strong, when you're so small, when they're so supported, when you're so alone. I mean, what kind of defense could I have without being called out on it? Does _anyone _ever get away from you? Or are you like your father?"

Clarisse looked like she'd been smacked.

_"_That's it, isn't it? You're a daughter of Ares. You'll push people around- it's the way things are, the order of things, the circle of life... So maybe I shouldn't take it personally, maybe I'm just one in a day. On the other hand, maybe your dad's right. Maybe you _do _fail."

Clarisse was zapped back to her own size.

"But I get where you're coming from- it's something in your blood that's hard to control or something. Bless you, seriously, bless you. It's not easy. But you could at least _try. _You could make an effort even if your particular DNA doesn't get called out for getting out of hand. You and I aren't that different," Carbon Copy said.

Her features smudged, she lost a foot or two of height, her hair softened and styled itself, her skin darkened, her build melted, her eyes widened…

"Even when I look like this," Lou Ellen said. "So think. Are you and your father that different?"

Clarisse didn't reply. She shook her head.

The smaller girl shook her head and she looked as if her throat was tight.

"I hope you prove it to me one day," Lou Ellen said. She disappeared.


	12. Sorcery and Siblings

**I leave for Lake Placid on Thursday and so I'd like to post another character's chapter before I leave. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**12**

**Sorcery and Siblings**

Laurel dumped some more firewood on the pile. The fire crackled.

"I think this should hold us," she said brushing her hair from her face.

"If not, whoever's on shift can collect more," Pollux said patting her shoulder. "You did good."

"Good enough to deserve the _second _shift?" Laurel asked.

"No. We've got to stick to a tight schedule. Keep it balanced." Clarisse said. "You're staying up with Travis and me."

"Can't believe that Clovis gets off easy," Travis muttered under his breath.

"Fine then," Clarisse said. "Someone wake him up, Laurel you can hit the hay."

Connor burrowed under his sweater. It wasn't a comfortable blanket but it was better than nothing. Lou Ellen made her nights _cold. _Then again, she was from Maine. Connor wondered if she'd ever stayed in India. Her dad had, but he'd never bothered to ask. That seemed stupid now. He'd always thought that it was cool when she babbled in Hindu at his request, or when she doodled henna onto her hand. It made her think of her aunt, who had a henna business for weddings and such- at least _that _Connor knew. But he realised how much he didn't. Why her hair smelled like green tea, where she'd gotten those chopsticks that held her hair up, the burn on the inside of her wrist much like a scythe… well, that maybe he knew. It must be the mark of an agent of Kronos. Why hadn't she healed it? Was the scar magically made? Gods, Connor shouldn't have wasted so much time with her _not _asking.

"Good night," Will called from the spot by the fire where he'd crashed. He was apart from the group all the time now. Maybe he felt how angry Connor still was at him for hurting Lou like that. Then again… Connor had done it too. That thought stung. He wouldn't do that on purpose. Not in a million years. Not to her. He hoped that she knew that.

"Good night, man." Someone else replied.

Connor jumped thirty feet in the air because _damnit that was Chris' voice. _

Sure enough, Chris was making himself comfy next to Connor, punching a tree root like it was a pillow.

"Sleep tight sweetheart."

Laurel shrieked. Silena was pushing her hair back behind her ear and tucking Laurel in.

"If you snore tonight I'm shooting you through the head," Michael Yew called out to Will who immediately shot up, kicking his hoody into the fire.

Nobody had a stronger reaction than Pollux. Pollux screamed and scrambled back from the person wishing him goodnight.

"You're dead!" He yelled to Castor.


	13. Broomsticks and Brotherhood

**As promised I'm posting one more character chapter before I leave. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

* * *

**13**

**Broomsticks and Brotherhood**

"Tsk, tsk, Pollux. The dead never truly leave us," a girl chided. It wasn't Clarisse, Laurel, Lou Ellen _or _Silena. She had blond hair, spiked naturally and streaked with chocolate, staying clear of mint green eyes.

"They always stay with us in our hearts. Don't they?" Another stranger replied. A girl with cascading purple hair. The strange thing was that the purple looked natural.

"Bull," a boy with a nose like a pug said.

"Or so we think," a girl whose skull was half shaved said.

"Nah, I think that we like to make ourselves miserable by thinking that the dead are gone," a girl with cornrows and a nose piercing said. She also wore ear cuffs, and talked to the others familiarly. As if they were comfortable with each other. As if they'd known each other for a very long time. Friends?

"Do we _like _to make ourselves miserable or _are _we miserable?" Purple-Head asked.

"Guess it depends on the person," Pug-Face said. "Twins, for example. Twins hurt."

"Low blow," Blondie chided at the same time as Castor.

They were here for Pollux.

"Who are you guys?" Pollux said. He was calmer than Connor would be if a dead sibling popped up. It was already creepy enough with Chris, who wasn't _dead. _The idiot was probably in his bunk at Camp, or even more likely in Connor's since his bunk was the best spot in the cabin. Geez, if Luke would've popped up… Nah, Connor would probably have punched him and ran like the wind.

"Sunshine Torrington," Blondie said.

"Gianna Welsey," Half-Bald replied.

"Dimitri Tereshkova," the boy said with a bow that bled showmanship.

"Columbina Gretel," Purple Head replied.

"Emmerence Bleski," Cornorows announced.

The strangers with the fudged up names all had the same dainty build as Lou Ellen.

Not friends. Siblings.

"You can't all be children of Hecate," Travis said beating Connor to it.

"Oh, we are." Sunshine promised.

"You're all dead," Laurel pointed out.

"Child, if you think that your cabin's loss was bad… Over three quarters of the children of Hecate died in the war or its aftermath," Emmerence said. "Some of us on the spot, some of us while we ran afterwards…"

"Some of us still don't know why we died," Dimitri replied quietly. That threw silence over everyone.

"Are you all in Elysium?" Clarisse ventured to ask.

"No. Most of us were never buried," Columbina said. "How could our siblings recover our bodies without looking like traitors to Olympus?"

"You have to be buried," Connor said. "Or else…"

"Or else you get to stick around the rivers of the underworld forever," Sunshine finished. "Very good Connor."

"There's the Styx, the River of Lamentation, the River of Fire, the River of Pain and the River of Forgetfulness," Dimitri said, stretching out the words as if they were important.

"Our options are limited," someone said popping up at Pollux' feet; the someone had blue hair and gold eyes. "Williamson Bane, son of Hecate by the way, hi ya'all."

"Still, it's not like we can do anything else," another girl with the same build and strange physique said appearing.

"For eternity," a girl who was probably her twin said, appearing arm in arm with her.

"Or as if we can be helped," a guy with waist-length hair and an impressive amount of freckles said popping up.

"Traitors to Olympus and all," a cackling brunette said as she materialised too.

"You know how it is," a guy with microbraids said appearing.

"Oh wait," his newly appeared clawed sister said appearing. "You don't. _You_ got to burry your dead. Closure _and _the knowledge that they weren't going to suffer forever."

"Cool stuff," a deep-voiced son of Hecate with closed eyes said.

There were too many of them, the place was getting crowded.

Then Connor realised that that wasn't the point. The point was that there were _so _many children of Hecate, dead, unburried and still haunting the world- whether they wanted to or not.

He finally recognised one of the dainty girls in the crowd. Her physique seemed toned down compared to the rest of her sisters very… natural. But still so unique and bright and pretty… it suited her. It suited Lou Ellen, Connor thought. Of course, anything probably would.

"Pollux, out of all the people here I think you're the only one I could have left back at camp, tucked into your bed. Maybe I didn't have to bring out the family."

"Oh, but you did Lou," a sister said.

"Yeah, you know you loved us," a brother with a bright smile and almond shaped eyes teased.

"That I do. But Pollux, I needed at least two people with common sense down here to make sure that my little exercise functions, and you need to learn."

The son of Dionysus bowed his head. "Learn what Lou?"

A child of Hecate started singing the alphabet. They were clever little shits, these ones.

"You can't say random things to people without knowing their past," Lou Ellen said. "This is my past. This is my present too, missing these guys, trying to bargain with the Lords and Ladies of the Underworld into giving them safety and a good place to spend their afterlives."

Sunshine moved through the crowd and clutched Lou Ellen to her chest. The younger sister let herself melt against her, as if this was common. Connor didn't think that the others had spotted her in the crowd–maybe not even Pollux. Which was good, because they didn't see her slump against her sister and tear up.

"And they're probably my future, because I will never stop missing them and trying to take care of them- even if they're dead." Lou Ellen said. "You came to talk to me one day, very sweetly. And you did it again and again and we talked- we really did. About a lot of stuff. Cool stuff, bad stuff, weird stuff, funny stuff, deep stuff… And you're one of the only people at Camp who acknowledged that some idiots like the ones here today treated the children of Hecate like crap."

Pollux nodded, looking pale. Connor spotted him between two redheads who decorated their hair with beads and feathers and small Dollar store toys. Castor was still with him, holding his hand in support.

"But the way you worded it… Oh, Pollux, the way you worded it…"

Lou Ellen was tearing up. Pollux toughened up his chin, raised his head and repeated what he'd said. Like a man. See, Pollux had seen enough in the day to know that Lou Ellen was hurt for legitimate reasons and so he knew not to hide or try to innocent himself.

That made Connor wonder what he'd done... and a faint idea formed in his head.

"What you've got to understand Lou Ellen is that some of these people have lost a sibling. You don't know how that is, but it's hard. That's why they don't like you." Pollux said.

Lou Ellen nodded. Sunshine was mouthing something- if Connor concentrated really hard he was pretty sure that he could read the words of a lullaby on her mouth.

"I loved talking to you- I really did. But I cried like a baby that night because I have too lost someone who means the world to me. Actually Pollux, I've lost nearly all of them. And you didn't even have a clue. You didn't even think I had a back story to acknowledge. It was like they'd-"

The camp was suddenly empty. Pollux' face winced when Castor dissapeared. For the second time.

"-Never existed."


	14. Spellbooks and Stereotypes

**Back from my trip and doing my rounds of stories-to-update. Hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

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**14**

**Spellbooks and Stereotypes**

The next morning, Pollux looked horrible. His hair stuck up, his eyes were puffy and he looked miserable. But he kept it together and helped everyone else toughen up too. They didn't find anything for breakfast apart a stream in which cold water flowed. That caused some grumpiness as they walked some more, not sure what else to do.

Suddenly, his feet felt weird, different. He looked down. Out of nowhere, his shoes had changed from ratty skater shoes to rattier black sneakers. He was actually dressed completely in black, completed with black gloves and a black hood with holes for his mouth and eyes. He turned towards Travis who was dressed the same.

"Copycat!" They both yelled at each other.

"What the Hades is this?" Clarisse said. They turned at the others and their eyes popped out of their skulls.

Clarisse was dressed in desert camouflage, with an M16 in hand, which might be why there were no animals in the forest. Pollux was wearing a toga with grapes stuck in his hair. Laurel was showing way too much skin according to camp/most public places regulation. Her shirt was hanging off her shoulder, showing her midriff, her skirt too short, fishnets, cheap jewelry, and her sandals were a mess of straps. Clovis wore these pink pyjamas with a teddy bear pattern, a matching little cap and a fluffy white dressing gown that made Connor sure they'd lose him to Morpheus' arms again. Will wore swimsuit trunks, flip flops and sunglasses.

"I guess she doesn't like jeans," Pollux said, picking at the grapes in his hair. Whenever he pulled one out another grew back.

"This is insane," Laurel said, flushing red at her outfit.

"I kind of like it." Clarisse said, weighing the gun in her hands. She pointed it up to the sky and pulled the trigger, but it didn't have any ammo. _ Smart move, Lou Ellen,_ Connor thought. She really had put a lot of thought into all of this.

"Guess not," Clarisse said. "What the freak is this about?"

The wind blew and dirt flew into all of their faces, making them spit.

"Okay, fine, we'll figure it out." Travis called out, spitting out some dirt.

"Stereotypes," Pollux said.

"What?" Connor asked.

"You two are thieves. I'm a drunk. Clovis is sleeping. Laurel is a hooker. Clarisse is a soldier." Pollux said. He looked at them as if he was expecting someone to speak up. "It goes with our parents."

"That makes no sense?"

"It makes all the sense, we just need… how?"

A wind blew, chilling all of them to the bone.

"Look!" Travis said. He was pointing to the sand and dirt and earth all around them. It was as if a giant finger was writing something down.

_Ask_

_Her._

_The _

_One_

_Who_

_Doesn't_

_Want_

_To_

_Be _

_Asked_

_Anything._

They looked up at Clarisse and Laurel, the only two hers around.

"I'd be down with giving any answer in the world." Clarisse grunted.

And so looks turned to Laurel.

She sighed and looked at the sky.

"This isn't just about that, is it?" She asked, putting a hand on her hip.

The wind blew again, and this time it had a bite to it. This time it dug into all of their skins.

_What_

_Makes _

_You_

_So_

_Sure_

_That_

_It_

_Was_

_"Just_

_That"_

_?_

_Do _

_I _

_Look_

_Like_

_I _

_Am_

_Nitpicking_

_At _

_Things_

_That_

_Are_

_"Just_

_That"_

Laurel's eyes were sprawled and her eyelid twitched.

"No way," she said softly. "That was a joke. A prank. And it wasn't _just me." _Laurel suddenly became defensive. "A bunch of people had to do with this. Drew, Ollie…"

"Yeah, because Drew is the patron saint of Things To Do That Are Okay." Connor said. "What is she talking about?"

"The Three Days in Black," Laurel said softly.

A sharp laugh ran around them. Forced, bitter laughing. Not the kind that Connor was used to, having been raised and having lived in Cabin 11 for the last six years. Or the one he was used to hearing from Lou, having been hanging out with her since the war.

A new message appeared in the sand, slowly but surely.

_Looks like Shakespeare was _

_Wrong_

_About_

_ A _

_Rose_

_By any other name would smell as sweet._

_Or maybe it just depends if everyone's on the same_

_Page_

_About what a rose_

_IS_

_See,_

_The thing's a joke to you because you call it a prank._

_I call it _

_Discrimination._


	15. Robes and Rumours

**Thank you for the undying support, I hope you enjoy the chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters.**

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**15**

**Rumours and Robes**

"It was a prank. Those get pulled all the time. You're at a summer prank for crying out loud!" Laurel scrambled to explained.

The clouds of ink split open, like an egg cracked on a kitchen counter. But instead of a yolk slipping out, lightning rang through the air. Everyone jumped and Travis yelled "HIT THE DECK!"

"What prank?" Connor yelled, feeling time pressing and closing against them. "What was it?"

It was rare for a child of Hermes not to remember a prank.

"We call it the Three Days in Black. I guess that _they, _by the looks of Lou Ellen's angsty little poetry-"

Lightning crashed again and Clovis nearly got hit.

"-Have another name for it."

Words wrote themselves in the sand, but this time not like free verses. They were everywhere, in tiny scrawl, making a ring in the ground. It surrounded all of them, and expanded until it was the only thing you could see up until the horizon.

_The Nightmare._

"It was a stupid prank we pulled on the Hecate kids," Laurel carried on. "We snuck into their cabin-"

"How did you do _that?" _Travis asked. "We only just figured that out last week!"

Lightning boomed again and the word in the ground changed.

_Spoilers_

It sounded ominous, and made Connor very edgy.

"Oh, someone went and flirted with a son of Athena," Laurel said waving her eye.

Clarisse coughed something that sounded suspiciously like 'you'.

"-Plus we were… well, Silena." Laurel said. That was enough. That was an explanation at camp nowadays- doing things because of the dead, for the dead, because of the pain, for the distraction, because of how much their absences hurt.

Thunder boomed.

_That's it?_

_I wish._

_That's not it._

_You know it._

_You know more._

_What's more?_

Laurel growled, it came from her throat.

"We hacked a bit." Laurel asked.

"Did you steal a key?" Clovis asked.

_She stole more than a key_

_And brought it back broken._

"The Hecate cabin isn't a computer, nor is its security system. It's top-notch magic that nobody here could even _think _about breaking." Travis said. "What the hell do you mean by 'hacked'?"

"We found the cheats for the security and broke it."

_How_

The words not only crawled across the ground, but they climbed up Laurel's legs. She screamed and tried brushing them away. The words were everywhere, Connor even heard them in his head. Laurel shook her head. Everything got louder. Laurel had her hands flattened against her ears.

_Howhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhowhow_

"I talked Griffin into it!" Laurel screamed.

_Talkedtalkedtalkedtalked if only, if only talkedtalkedtalked_

"I kissed him at Thalia's tree and he told me, he spilled the beans, he trusted me." Laurel said.

The whispering stopped. Everything was dead quiet. Even the people.

Then Clarisse slapped Laurel right across the cheek.

"What was that for?" The daughter of Aphrodite hissed, holding her hand to her cheek.

"You seem to deserve it more with every passing second." She growled. "You don't mess with peoples' hearts, girl. You just don't. You of all people should know that. Didn't you lose a sister? Shame on you."

"Don't you _dare _bring Silena into this." Laurel growled.

"How can I not?" Clarisse asked. "She would've been so…"

Laurel slapped Clarisse and Connor started panicking and screaming and crying inside because this wasn't going to be pretty.

Ever-calm Pollux thankfully stepped in between them.

"Okay, look. We can see that bad things happened. But Silena is dead. Let's not bring her into this. Let's focus on what happened and not hit each other."

"Let me get this straight," Clovis said to keep the subject changing. "You pretended to like Griffin so you'd be able to come in and out of the Hecate cabin. You did what you had to do. Then you dumped him."

Laurel didn't say something, but empty spaces and soundless moments tended to speak more than words when someone was guilty.

"You…" Connor said holding back a word.

"What?" She said shooting Connor a deadly look. "I used my strength and God-given gift to get something? Oh well excuse me that my gifts aren't knife throwing or duelling. I'm a daughter of the love goddess. I don't fight, I charm."

"Okay, fine, whatever." Travis said. "You wrapped Griffin around your finger to find out how to get into the Hecate cabin and then you threw him away like a dirty sock once you'd done what you had to do- cool, fine. But what _did _you do? Because I want in on pranks."

"We replaced some of their clothes," Laurel muttered.

Lightning boomed.

"Okay, fine. All their clothes. It wasn't that big of a deal though, I mean, the Hermes cabin freaking _steals _all the clothes of cabins sometimes. We left substitutes."

_Substitutes?_

_Nothing would have been_

_So much_

_So, so much_

_Better_

"What did you leave?" Connor asked. He seriously didn't remember this. He hadn't seen the children of Hecate walking around in horrible clothes from the sixties or eighties or anything like that. He didn't know what was going on.

Lightning struck again.

"I didn't say anything!" Laurel scream. _"Gods."_

The lightning had hit a very specific spot on the sand, which was weird because usually lightning hit the highest point it could find- like trees.

The sand piled up. Piled up, and sculpted itself as if the invisible hands of an artist were carefully shaping the form that took shape in front of them- the elderly woman dressed in old fashioned clothing that rippled in a non-existent breeze.

"I'm not even going to bring up what you did to my brother." The old lady said. Her voice was Lou Ellen's. Lou wouldn't show herself, so she did this. Connor shivered. Good gods, was there even a limit to what Lou could do here? In her world?

_No,_ Connor thought. _Probably not. _ There was in the real world, and clearly things were upside down and changed in this one. Clearly everything was for Lou Ellen's better here.

"That unleashes in me a fury that hell can't hold down so this world… well, it wouldn't handle that much energy and magic. I'm not even going to _think _about it because I know that I would probably hurt you twice as bad as you hurt him- and that's saying something, because my big brother cried. He _cried _for three nights in a row."

The silence was awkward.

"No. Instead, let's talk about something that hurt the whole cabin directly as opposed to indirectly hurting us all through one of our brothers. Yes, that sounds fun, Laurel, considering you've done both.

"We can't override magic that's more powerful than ours," the old lady said. "That's the number one rule of Children of Hecate. We can't undo what our mother's done, or what more powerful siblings than us have done. And your mother is the goddess of beauty and hence clothes, so nobody could do anything about your cute little joke.

We had to walk around wearing black dresses, black robes, black suits, black capes, black hats, black everything for that whole week, looking like Hogwarts students. Do you know how demeaning that was? Do you know how insulting that was? We practise an art. We practise something sacred to our blood and heritage- something that very little people see truth and beauty in, and we count on demigods who know about magic to respect what we do, out of all the people in the world.

The last time our practises were attacked and abused like that, it was called the witch trials. Do you know how painful that part of my cabin's history is? Do you know how much it hurts to this day to have that spot on history? I was _alive _during the witch trials in another body and I know it- it is a _very sensitive subject that you just shot through the foot_." Lou Ellen said. "I get enough crap in my day to day life. People ask me why I don't have '_that red dot' _on my forehead, or why I think that cows are sacred just because I'm Indian. I've been told to monitor my dreams because I _am _a girl after all. Don't need to be shamed for another thing that I didn't choose about my identity, thank you very much."

Laurel looked at Lou Ellen's sand figure, stunned.

"I didn't know that children of Hecate did that. Remember their past lives…"

"Of course not. You'd need a child of Hecate to tell you that, and why would we tell you?"

"But you _did _know what you were doing to Griffin. You may not have known that that would just hurt all of us in the end, I give you that. Not all cabins are as tightly knit as ours. But you hit two birds with one stone, Laurel. You hurt us directly- facing us like an honourable person and hurting us; and then you did it the sneaky, disgusting way. Maybe you're a snake too. Maybe I should send another one of those, how'd you like that?"

"Don't," Laurel moaned.

"I like how you're trying to use that as a reason to make me stop," Lou Ellen growled. Her voice was quicker, angrier. "Because _I _tried it once. I did, you should remember."

Laurel shook her head no. Lou Ellen took a deep breath,

"No, of course you don't... Because to you hurting someone is stepping on an ant, not hitting a deer with a car. It was the last of the Three Days of Black, like you so nicely call them. I walked by you. You asked me in which house the sorting hat put me. I said exactly what you said. _Don't. _You kept going- you told me why I wasn't worth being in every house, how they'd have to make a house especially for me. Call it the house of Lame Lamerson, how our symbol could be a black cat or a slug."

Connor closed his eyes. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Sometimes he couldn't believe the lows that people sank to when you compared them to the highs that they could rise to. But right now it was as if the highs didn't exist since this world was so dark –was Lou's world seriously this dark? Her every single day life?

"Don't. Interesting word when you think about it- which I do. Don't- it's a contraction of _do not_. As in, 'I can't take it please don't make me even try to endure what you're doing'. As in, 'it'll hurt me please think twice about doing that to me'. As in, 'I'm having a bad day I don't need your help to get to rock bottom because I'm already there and I don't know what comes after that'. _Do not as in 'please spare me I am so vulnerable and so at your mercy'." _

Laurel was shivering.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't… think… All those things it means…"

"It means more," Lou Ellen said. "It means _so much more."_

"Don't do this to me, don't drive me to the dark places, don't set fire to the parts of me that are ready to burn and die, don't make me want to burn." Lou Ellen spat. The sand form had changed- had slowly drifted away. They were looking right at Lou Ellen now- wearing a grey trench coat and jean shorts and a camp T-shirt tied in the back with an elastic.

"Don't, don't, don't- but guess what- everyone _always does anyways. _Do not –don't- has lost all its power. Do not doesn't mean any of that anymore, it means 'I rather you not if it pleases your majesty', doesn't it Laurel? And since you rule since you're Laurel Jenkins of course, why would you not? Do you know what it feels when someone says _do not _and you do anyways? How does it feel for them? Think of it this way. You're in a box."

Black ribbons shot out from the ground. They seemed to latch onto thin air and slowly climb up –like climbing plants on an invisible wall.

"And suddenly the walls climb."

The ribbon got higher. Laurel was circled. She only saw slivers of Lou Ellen through the ribbons, just like she saw slivers of sunshine.

"You're stuck at the bottom of that box now. And someone's looking down. They're bigger than the box, they're not trapped between the four walls that you are. Four walls –pain, regret, grief, guilt. They're looking down at you with a smile." Her voice was choking.

Connor remembered something. He remembered what she'd said earlier, about Griffin. _That unleashes in me a fury that hell can't hold down so this world… well, it wouldn't handle that much energy and magic. _

There was a quota of magic this little magic box Lou was holding them in could hold. And as her anger raised...

Oh gods.

No.


	16. Occultism and Outcome of Action

**Hi! Here's your before-last chapter of _My World. _The next chapter is a bit tricky because I'm out of town for two weeks, visiting family in the prairies. So either I post it from a phone while I'm there, or you get the story in two weeks. If that's the case- don't panic, I didn't forget you. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters shown below.**

* * *

**16**

**Occultism and Outcome of Action**

"Lou Ellen…" Clarisse said gently stepping forwards.

Lou threw her arms out. They were all thrown back, except for Connor who managed to stay standing, looking at Lou Ellen. Laurel yelped and hit her head against the ground hard. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she didn't move. Travis ran to her.

She hadn't even noticed what had just happened to Laurel; Lou Ellen's eyes were shut closed.

"And then they're closing the flaps of the box on top of you."

The ribbons bent over and made a ceiling, as if they'd reached the height of everything. Of this world, of Lou's temper…

"Even if you could find a way out, now you can't ever get out because they _did not _listen to you when you were weak and alone and you asked them '_don't'_."

Lou Ellen was shaking like a leaf. Her face was scrunched up, on the verge of tears as the magic expanded and threatened to destroy them all.

"Lou!" Connor said. He'd been spared a few flips and throws. He had to use whatever that tiny advantage might mean. "You're a good person! Please don't do something you'll regret."

"I'm not even sure that I'll regret it," Lou said. Her voice was quiet and serious, stoic and calm, but her lip was quivering. "I tried being bad, and I tried being good- and frankly it felt a whole lot more satisfying back when I stood up for myself!"

"It did, Lou, and that's wrong. Not okay. That that happened… It was so wrong." Connor said.

For a second the energy levels sank. Lou Ellen's posture relaxed. They thought they'd be okay.

Then it all spiked up, and even Connor was thrown a few feet back.

"You're not enough of a saint to be talking, _Connor!" _Lou Ellen said, suddenly enraged again as if someone kept pouring gas on a dying fire. "_You _drove me to this place. _You _helped to create this! _You _did this too! You're…" Her voice cracked, as if her next thought pained her. "You're just as bad as the rest of them! Always teasing me and playing your stupid pranks. Making my life miserable so you could get a few cruel laughs out of even crueller people, without even thinking that everything –even smiles- may have costs. You and your stupid brother, that's why you're here. Because you're not always funny Connor. Sometimes you're heartbreaking."

Her voice was cracking. Connor's heart did too.

"I know. I guessed. And I'm so sorry," Connor said. "Lou Ellen, I really am."

"_Sorry _doesn't make anything go away," she said. "_Sorry _doesn't even promise that nothing will go wrong in the future. And you did those things and I kept forgiving you because the next second you were making _me _laugh. You are a twofaced boy. And I don't have to forgive you anymore! I don't have to forgive _any of you _anymore!"

"Connor tell her you idiot!" Travis yelled from where he cradled Laurel's head in his lap.

"_What?" _Connor yelled again, over the wind.

"Now is not the time for you to be shy or prideful, just _tell her!" _Travis yelled. "Tell her why you did it- why you got those massive prank ideas ideas. Tell her why you dragged me into this- why _we _did it!"

The shadows kept climbing up, up, up. Connor could only see a tiny bit of the sky... It would be gone soon...

"I have the most massive crush on you!" Connor finally yelled.

The shadows stopped crawling across the ceiling. Lou's furious eyes focused on him.

"I have the most massive crush on you and I have since you stayed in my cabin while waiting for yours to be built," he said, his eyes squeezed shut. "I loved your eyes and your hair that smells like green tea and your magic and the way you talk and the way you look at things and describe them and I just thought that there was nothing about me that you'd ever look twice at, so I tried to be funny. People like funny people. But it didn't work, everything I'd do would just backfire. But I didn't want you to even think I'd tried being impressive because I'd failed so miserably and I was shy, and so I just kept pulling those stupid pranks. I am so, so sorry Lou. You didn't bring what I did to you down on yourself by having been in Kronos' army, it happened because you're the best person I know and because I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to say that right. It's not your fault. None of this is."

He looked up at her, feeling as pitiful as a dog sitting in the rain. At least the cat was out of the bag.

She looked on the verge of tears, her lips pinched and her eyes squeezed nearly shut.

"I didn't deserve it," she said.

"No. You didn't. I am so, so sorry. It's my fault, and I wouldn't blame you if you kept those shadows growing."

Lou looked at him, broken. Her face twisted into an expression of horror and fear and absolute heartbreaking and devastating sadness. It broke Connor's heart even more. Suddenly the shadows shrunk away. The world, Lou's world, was white with splotches of ink as a sky again.

Lou bent in two and dropped to her knees. Connor realised that she was crying, and he ran up to her falling to his knees. He ripped his jeans but he didn't care. He held her in his arms, more tightly than he'd ever held anyone.

"I didn't go into this meaning to hurt anyone," Lou sobbed. "I just… I had all the power, exactly like all of you did all along… and it was so new… and it was right there…"

"I know," Connor said. Tears were streaming down his face too. "I know and I'm so sorry."

Lou Ellen sobbed for a bit more, her head bundled up to his chest.

"You aren't… playing me… right?" She finally asked. "What you said… it wasn't for mercy. It wasn't a joke. Not this time. Please... Tell me the truth, was it?"

"No," Connor said. "No, I wouldn't trick you like that. I know that you have no reason to believe me, but I wouldn't do that to you."

Lou Ellen looked up to him, her eyes filled with tears still. She straightened herself up, slowly getting to Connor's level. She leaned towards him and kissed him. One of the hands holding her immediately ran up her back and to her head, his fingers digging into her hair. He could taste salty tears on her lips, just a bit. But they tasted mostly like sugar and honey. Sugar and honey, the stuff his mother put truckloads of in green tea.

She pulled back and looked at him, that irreparable sadness gone from her face. Sadness was still there. But Connor thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a way for everyone to fix their little patch of it.

"Now I have one," she said softly. She was drained, emotionally and physically. She slumped down against his chest and breathed deeply.

He was doing his part.

Clarisse got to her knees.

"I'm sorry," she said. Connor hadn't thought that that was in her vocabulary.

"I shouldn't have done what I did," Clovis said sitting down too.

"Me neither," Travis said. "I should have kept my kid brother under control."

Will crumpled on the floor and held his legs to himself. "I didn't think. I'm sorry."

"I was careless and said things too lightly," Pollux said. "I'll remember not to do that."

It was funny how it took a near-death situation, a climax, a freak-out and being told how much they sucked exactly to their faces in the harshest of ways to get people to acknowledge their wrongs and apologise for them.

It wasn't funny actually, it was sad. Sad the extent that things had to be taken to before anyone bothered to move a muscle.

But a highlight, there was one after all, was that these people were acknowledging and apologising and that climax hadn't turned into a tragedy. That freak-out hadn't gotten anyone hurt. That near-death situation had been near and not deadly after all. _They _were lucky. They hadn't lost anyone. What would they have done if they had? Would Connor have been able to live with himself?

And then suddenly they were all standing in the middle of the central green, demigods milling around them. Laurel was awake. The sun was shining. It was morning. It was a clear morning, as if nothing had happened at all, as a matter of fact. The light was too bright for Connor's eye and the puffy white clouds confused him.

Lou Ellen got up pushing Connor back, dusted off her trench coat and disappeared; maybe literally maybe not- it was hard to tell.

But Connor knew he had to find her.


	17. Heresy and Happily Ever Afters

**The biggest worry of a writer is not being able to get your point across, to put the words in the right order and to say things right. I have this problem when I talk, but when I write something down I feel like it makes much more sense. And this story got a point across even better than I could have hoped, and touched more people than I could have imagined. Thank you for reading, reviewing, being excited about this story and just generally existing. My world wouldn't be the same without you.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters shown below**

**Dedication: All the readers.**

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**17**

**Heresy and Happily Ever Afters**

Connor was thrown back from Cabin Twenty.

"Get out," someone said. Griffin swung out of the door with a scowl on his face; he was the brother that Laurel had messed with. Connor thought about mentioning it but decided that he liked his limbs where they were.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to intrude," Connor said. "I'm looking for Lou Ellen."

"No," Griffin snarled. That was a Mama Bear reaction right there, and Connor's stomach caved in at a couple of places. Did everyone know how hurt Lou Ellen had been except for him? "No and if you ever hurt her…"

"I don't want to," Connor said. "I really, really don't. I just want to talk."

"Go away, and don't look for her. My little sister doesn't need someone like you."

"Griffin, I'm serious." Connor said. "And contrary to popular belief, I think she does. I think she needs someone like me and if not, well, I know that she wants someone like me and I want her so-"

Griffin turned around and Connor was thrown back again. The son of Hecate was leaning over him instantly.

"If you mess with her…"

"I won't," he said. "I swear on the Styx that I wouldn't."

Griffin starred at him long and hard.

"She's been through more than you could imagine."

"I know."

"I'll beat the life out of you if you hurt her."

"I'll come for it," Connor said.

Griffin paused some more and got up.

"She's not in the cabin. She passed through a couple of minutes ago. I don't know where she went."

Connor said thanks and went off to look for her. He missed breakfast, told his stomach to suck it up, and eventually found her by the Big House after running through the strawberry fields and around all the cabins, pausing only to ask Hestia if she'd seen a pretty girl with black hair.

Lou Ellen leaned against the side of the Big House that nobody went to where the sun had made the paint fade. She was sitting on the edge of a well cover, her legs dangling down in front of the basement's window.

"Lou," Connor breathed in relief when he saw her. He looked up and her face, her ashy and tear-streaked face, was nearly enough to wrench the relief out of him. But only a bit. So what if she was mad at him? So what if she was pissed? So what if she hadn't mean to kiss him like she had? At least she was safe. He'd been scared of what she might do to herself, horrible as that sounded. Really, really scared.

Lou held out her arms and Connor didn't have to be asked twice. He sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her.

She twisted her hands in his shirt.

"Why did you come?" She asked. Her head was pressed against his chest and so he tried to keep his heartbeat down.

"Because screwing up once is bad enough and if I have to be any sorrier I think I'll just burst."

She had piano fingers.

"Do the others think so?"

"I don't know. We didn't really talk. Well, maybe they did, I don't know. I was more focused on finding you."

There was washed out nail polish on her fingernails. Connor thought that it might have been gold.

"I didn't think you would."

"You kissed me."

"So?"

"Didn't I kiss back well enough?"

He just _knew _that she smiled, the same way that oracles knew the future.

Her hands had little scars running up and down the fingers. He wondered what she'd done to them.

He kissed her forehead and asked, "Didn't I make a point?"

"I'm too used to points being at the tip of knives," Lou said.

"That can change," Connor said.

"I hope so." Lou Ellen said. There was genuine hope in her eyes.

"I know so. I believe in it. I will fight for it," Connor said.

Her hands were soft. He wasn't actually touching them but he knew so.

"Is Laurel alright? I tried healing her on the way back..."

"She's fine," Connor said. What did he know about it? Nothing. But demigods got worst than concussions all the time, she'd live.

"I didn't mean to hurt her. I guess I was just so pushed to my limit... it doesn't matter what happened. It's over."

"Yes it does. Of course it matters. It matters that people know what they're doing wrong in this world."

"I didn't want to hurt anyone."

"We know," Connor said. "We... well, _I _didn't either."

"I know. I guess I was partially pissed because I _so _wanted this moment to happen sooner," Lou said.

Her knuckles were white with tension.

"You don't have to hold on so tightly," he said rubbing her knuckles. "I'm not going anywhere. Not in this world."

The End

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7/24/012 3:48 PM

7/24/012 4:36 PM

Forever scripting,

HecateA


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